SUBMIT!

Call for proposals by artists and writers
Skol Summer Workshops and Exhibition
July 10-16 ,  2008 - Montréal, Canada
Deadline: June 10, 2008
www.skol.ca


It is precisely at the moment where one thing becomes something else that the action gets really exciting. That’s where the exchanges happen: chemical reactions, fistfights, osmosis, infections, kisses. Surface to surface, separate entities meet and make a border. The relation changes, the border changes. One thing to count on: it will never stay the same. Given the alternating violence and richness of borders, what strategies can we develop to better work with and across them? As cultural producers, how do we navigate this territory in order to create politically relevant work?

As part of Skol’s new Summer Practicum, Gina Badger, Adrienne Mak and Amy Novak are inviting proposals to participate in a workshop series consisting of a six-day intensive development and creation workshop that will culminate in a collaborative exhibition. Participants in the workshops will be asked to prepare a presentation for a panel, help come up with activities and fieldtrips, and collaborate in creating the exhibition.

The goals of the workshop series include:

* To examine the ways that relations at and across borders inform creative practices;
* To develop dynamic relations between gallery space and time-based, performative and social practices occurring outside the gallery;
* Create a rigorous collaborative environment that will challenge the bounds of habitual creative practice, flirt appropriately with the possibility of failure, and nourish networks of creative producers.

The workshop series will take place in Montreal from July 10 to 16; the exhibition will run from July 18 to August 14, and will be followed by a publication. A group of 6-9 artists and 1-2 writers will be chosen to participate in the workshops; a travel stipend will be provided for out-of-town participants. Local participants may be asked to host out-of-town participants. Participants are strongly encouraged to be resourceful and creative with their collection and use of materials; a small shared budget for materials will also be available.

Potential participants are asked to submit a 250-word statement of interest that reflects upon the following :

1. GAPS & CRACKS: All borders shift and change over time; heaving with the seasons, developing fissures. There is always some way around or through a border. But how do we go about finding it? How are relations across borders, as well as movements over and through them, informed by relations of power? Who and what is allowed to cross a border, and what is not? Who writes the rulebook? How do drug smuggling, osmosis, GORE-TEX®, crossdressing, and other related phenomena challenge the rules of boundaryspace? How can we become better border tricksters?

2. THIRD SPACE: A border is rarely a clear line separating two discrete territories. Most often there is a third space created between them, a boundary zone that has its own particular characteristics. The ecological term for the third space is the “ecotone,” an interstitial zone whose heterogeneity represents more than the sum of its parts. Like tidal pools, the territories created by transdisciplinary and collaborative practices are fertile boundary zones. As transdisciplinary practitioners, how do our practices help to draw and redraw the boundaries of social and creative norms? How does the queerness of third space inform our practices and our politics?

3. INTERFACES: If borders seem to delimit the here and the there, or the inside and the outside, they also offer the possibility of communication between them. The interactions that take place at boundaries confirm the reality of difference, while also undermining its authority through mutual affect, always lingering and unpredictable. These border dynamics are always at play with collaborative and coalition work, whether creative or otherwise. How do we relate across borders that are geographical, economic, cultural, and personal, in any combination thereof, to create work that is socially and politically relevant?

In your statement of interest, please specify whether you would like to participate in the workshop series as an artist or a writer. If you will need to travel, please tell us from where. In addition to the statement of interest, please include:

1. A short biography (150 words);
2. A professional CV detailing relevant experience (2 pages max.);
3. 3-5 jpg images of relevant work (appropriate size for web viewing, 72 dpi no larger than 1000K) &/OR a weblink to one video &/OR a writing sample in pdf or Microsoft Word format (1500 words max).

Submissions are due by June 10, midnight. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance or refusal by June 14.

Please send questions and/or complete submission packages to:
projets[at]skol[dot]ca